In what damn universe is twitter a replacement for RSS? RSS is more than link sharing, for goodness sake, and all the false equivalence that it is is so grating.

Twitter doesn’t replace it. Facebook doesn’t replace it.

Why everyone seems to want one tool for all tasks is beyond me. RSS is for one thing, and it’s good at that thing. Shoehorning some similar task into FB is a loss for everyone.

And twitter, for god’s sake usually you can’t even read the damn URL since it’s shortened, much less the title of the article or the content. It’s like replacing a newspaper or magazine with a bunch of closed envelopes that contain one article a piece, with little or no context for each. Which is to say, manifestly worse.

Anyway, soapbox over for the moment. I’ll be taking my RSS feeds to The Old Reader (apparently appropriately as i seem to be some kind of curmudgeonly gray beard), and continuing to happily read what i want, rather than try to digest a random firehose of twitter links.

]]>By: CHAMP322http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46254
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:18:42 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46254I still can’t understand what the “cost” is for google to maintain Reader…it’s a framework already built. And no one is asking for improvements. So why kill it?
]]>By: GlennFleishmanhttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46246
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:30:16 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46246GRRR: Aaron Swartz was erroneously credited all over the dang Internet with “inventing” or “co-inventing” RSS. He did not. I was deeply involved with Web development and meeting with, speaking at, and interviewing folks working on RSS and other specifications.

Aaron joined a key group formed in part by O’Reilly & Associates (then a book publisher) to create a more robust spec to replace RSS 0.9x, which was developed by Netscape and made useful and popular by Dave Winer. Winer is legendarily difficult to deal with, but he did an amazing job in making RSS popular for blogs and, very quickly, news sites.

The “RSS 1.0″ spec that Aaron contributed to was an entirely different and incompatible effort with similar aims, and was ultimately released and used, but it’s a subset of all feeds subscribed. In fact, RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0 (Winer update), and Atom (a different standard) all more or less co-exist and nobody cares about the differences.

Aaron deserves credit for many things but inventing RSS isn’t one of them. The fact that RSS comes in three forms and all are named the same is danged confusing.

]]>By: Auroshttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46244
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:06:33 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46244There are plenty of ways to aggregate RSS feeds. I read you through LiveJournal.
]]>By: GRRRhttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46241
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:20:40 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46241If it is the death of RSS, then what Google just did was spit on the grave stone of Aaron Swartz.
]]>By: rjs0http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46240
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:41:59 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46240there are a lot of us who will quit, rather than switch to facebook and twitter…
]]>By: Ivanonymoushttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46238
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:18:27 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46238But will news sites and blogs keep offering feeds? That seems more important than the sync service that Google was offering.
]]>By: KenG_CAhttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46237
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:05:55 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46237“I love unsecured wifi networks, and have yet to find any empirical data supporting the thesis that they cause real damage.”

It’s hard to generate empirical data about the damage of unsecured networks, because many victims are unaware they have been compromised via open wi-fi. The tools to eavesdrop on open networks are free and will run on any used $100 laptop. You can sit on the other side of a coffee shop and capture all kinds of internet communications without anyone even knowing. If they ultimately break into an account of yours, you will have no way of knowing it’s because you surfed in a coffee shop (disclosure: I work for a company that builds products designed to stop that kind of activity).

The $7 million settlement and the decision to drop RSS reader are not linked. It’s just not worth Google’s time to fight something that will only cost $7 million to end. You’re reading way too deep into that decision.

As for their reader, so what? It wasn’t very good, anyway, once I started using Chrome instead of FF, I looked for a better RSS reader, and found one in RSS Live Links. Google spent so little effort on improving their reader that it never even reached the hobby status of Apple TV. They dropped it because it probably couldn’t get 10 minutes of executives time in any given week.

This also doesn’t mean Google will become less of a utility or public service; rather the opposite. There are other options for RSS readers, and the public doesn’t need Google. This will allow them to focus on utilities and services that society can use but no others are providing.

]]>By: Esguitoshttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46235
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:54:44 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46235the more important question, I think, is would the death of RSS mean the death of blogs? What do you think Felix?
]]>By: GregHaohttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/14/did-google-just-kill-rss/comment-page-1/#comment-46233
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:58:09 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/?p=20903#comment-46233@web2mon – that anybody would ever believe Google when it said, “do no evil” was clearly fooling themselves.
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